See You Looking Through Me
by superbeef
Summary: "She hasn't even looked at you since that night." Zoe wonders why Mandy's avoiding her after she comes back to Bullworth. Second person POV from Zoe's perspective.


She hasn't even looked at you since that night.

Since Jimmy almost killed someone, since he saved the school, since you came back. You're back now. Back at Bullworth, because that was what was supposed to happen. That's how the story was supposed to play out; not because you wanted it, but because you were a sucker for happy endings. Everyone always got what they needed, what they deserved. Jimmy was king, Gary and Coach were gone, and you were back. That was fine. That was good. But she still won't look at you.

Can she not see you? She had to have seen you. You kissed him. She cheered. They all cheered. Maybe she just doesn't remember (but how could she forget?). No one seems to remember anything about you.

Petey says something from the other side of the table (what was it? You can't remember for the life of you). Jimmy is laughing next to you. He laughs so loud and full you can practically hear his ribs stretching and cracking. He's snorting now and you're laughing too. Louder and louder, then quieter and quieter. When he finally stops, he asks what's up, why the long face. It's fine babe, don't worry about it, it's just the food, it's just the air, you say. Always lying, always right to his face. Always something small but just enough to make you feel guilty (you trust him; you really do, you're serious, but not with this, he wouldn't care, wouldn't wanna bother with it).

Jimmy looks back at Petey and you look back at her. Mandy. Mandy, Mandy, Mandy. Tall, but not as tall as you, dark hair, dark eyes, and so thin; so much thinner than before. Back when she saw you, when you were both short and angry and awkward and ugly in all the right ways.

Your parents were divorced and hated each other, hers were married and wanted to die. She had three older brothers who were all the same, and you had one that ran away when you were eight. Bullworth was a way to control you; help you get straight. Not like your brother, you're fucking brother, good riddance. For Mandy, it was a tradition. If not Bullworth, than where else, sweetie? That's where your father and I went, you know. You'll love it there, you will, promise.

The first day of school you started a revolution in the cafeteria: no more slop, we'd rather starve, I'd rather kill myself. You can't make me. Edna chasing you out dodging globs of mac 'n' cheese and spoiled milk. Grabbed you by the hair and dragged you up to the principal's office, pulled so hard she left stray strands of red all across the hallway. Mandy had been caught crying under the bleachers (everyone laughed at her when she tried out, she told you, they just wouldn't stop, I tried my best, I tried so hard, Zoe, I really did. You tell her she doesn't need their approval, they'll see, one day, they'll see you, they'll be sorry then). You sat next to each other in the office chairs. Her eyes were still puffy and red but she laughed when you told her what you did, how it would take weeks to get those stains out of the walls.

She looked so pure when she smiled. So soft, and innocent. Mandy's skin was always so clean. She looked like one of the dolls you used to see in the second hand store; old and dusty, but with porcelain skin so smooth and white it made everything else in there look even dirtier than it already was. They would sit for months without anyone touching them, until one day some frail old thing would buy every single one of them and leave yet another gap in the shelves for the manager to fill up with stained t-shirts and useless crap. You were never that lucky. Freckles and bruises covered you from head to toe, zits filling in any spots they might have missed. Your smile was crooked and wide (just like the Devil, your grandma would say to you, and red hair too! What a troublemaker you're going to be, your poor mother...). Too much even for braces to fix, if you could have ever afforded them. People would always suggest covering yourself up a bit, the older girls in the dorm offering you makeup tips whenever you had a particularly bad breakout. Even if you liked makeup you wouldn't have listened to them, but Mandy took in every word like they were reciting gospel.

She always wore makeup, not like she needed it, she just did. Because that's what the older girls were doing, that's what all the cheerleaders did. She still does, you notice. Blue eyeshadow. Subtle, but strong.

You liked watching her put it on. It was like watching someone paint; first the base, then the shadows, moving up to the lights, adding in detail. Clean up around the edges. She always offered to do yours for you, even after you started to grow apart. Her joining the team and you cutting class and smoking and wanting to die and wanting to disappear and needing to leave, I have to get out of here, they're fucking killing me in here, man, I don't know how much more I can stand it, I swear to God if he touches me one more fucking time —

"Could you please just let me do it, Zoe, just once? You won't even have to wear it out, you can take it off literally the second I'm done."

"Only if you do something for me, too."

Brown eyes light up with delight as she kicks her legs and squeals a little bit, not even wondering what she had to do, not even caring. You sitting cross legged on her bed and her scooting up next to you, laying out all the little bottles and brushes on the sheets. The next fifteen minutes are quiet and beautiful, only interrupted by the occasional groan from you as she picked up yet _another_ shade of lipstick and swatched it on your arm. It has to match your skin tone and the color of your hair, she said, otherwise you'll look fugly. What does it matter, you're not even going to go outside this room, you think to yourself. Not out loud, not now, she's so happy. Don't want her to be mad at you. She's been so mad at you lately.

When Mandy finishes, she picks you up by the arm and shoves you to the mirror standing in the corner of your room. Her room. And the Vietnamese girl who laughed too much's room. And the other redheaded girl's room, the one who was just as angry, but didn't destroy things the same way that you did.

She manages to get one photo of you with it on before you smudge it all over your face with your hands. She tuts, saying how long that eyeliner took her to get, and did you even _look_ at the contour I did? Ugh, whatever, I've got some makeup wipes in my bag, use those. You do, and they work much better than your hands did. You can see your freckles now.

Mandy still hasn't asked what you want her to do.

"I want you to stop throwing up."

"What?"

She was tying her shoes, just tying them, not expecting this to be the favor, not wanting it to be that, oh, God, can we please not talk about this? I can't handle this, I can't do that, you know I can't, how did you even know? Are you stalking me or something? Why can't you just leave me alone, you don't even like me anymore, we aren't even friends anymore. I'm sorry Zoe, I didn't mean that, you know I didn't (she did though, she's not blind, not then and not now, she knows we aren't supposed to like each other, it's the rules). I just can't, please don't be mad. I'm sorry.

You wish she was lying to you. You wish she was just doing that, still doing it, always had done it for attention. It was just a one time thing, it never happened again. But it did happen. It happened so much that every girl avoided her stall in the bathroom and every teacher looked at her with the same mix of pity and disappointment they looked at you with. Her hair fell out, sometimes, in the shower or on her pillow after she had woken up. It came out in clumps. Her breath stank and her cheeks puffed out and she disappeared after every meal and she was so, so tiny. Way too thin to be healthy, way too thin to stop. It's fine, I shouldn't have said it, I'm sorry, it was stupid, I'm just worried about you. Promise me you'll get help. Promise me right now.

"I promise."

You don't think she ever got help. You never really found out; you got expelled three days later. After that, Mandy and you stopped talking altogether. She had no obligation to engage you now that you were gone, and you weren't planning on going back anytime soon. The night it happened, your mother spent an hour screaming at you and another two crying over the phone to both your grandmother (I told you so, see this is what happens when you get it with a redhead, Devil's soldiers they are, first the colt and now the filly, a damn shame…) and the school board. They wouldn't take you back. You didn't give a shit.

Mandy had spent the past years of her life entirely separate from you, and now here you were, laid out in front of her, open and eager and she didn't even notice you. Wasn't she curious about you? How much had you done since you left, how many car tires slashed and beer cans shoplifted; and her, how many bottles of foundation had she been through and how many times had she smiled, and who at? What for? God, who cares, who even fucking cares, you think, not like she cares, no one cares, no one remembers me, who gives a shit about anyone here, I hate this, why am I here why did you make me come you idiot you fucking moron thanks a lot babe, yeah babe I'm fine, no don't touch me, I said I'm fine.

The back of her head starts to burn from your glaring and she turns and she sees you. She looks you in the eye and she is smiling at you and you've stopped glaring but aren't smiling back because she didn't deserve a smile, not yet, not from you.

"Hey, Zoe. Been a while."

"Yeah."


End file.
